Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a 16.3-acre (6.6-hectare) complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City.

Planning

A consortium of civic leaders and others led by, and under the initiative of, John D. Rockefeller III built Lincoln Center as part of the "Lincoln Square Renewal Project" during Robert Moses's program of urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. Respected architects were contracted to design the major buildings on the site, and over the next thirty years the previously blighted area around Lincoln Center became a new cultural hub.

Rockefeller was Lincoln Center's inaugural president from 1956 and became its chairman in 1961. He is credited with raising more than half of the $184.5 million in private funds needed to build the complex, including drawing on his own funds; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund also contributed to the project. The center's three buildings, David Geffen Hall, David H. Koch Theater (formerly the New York State Theater) and the Metropolitan Opera House were opened in 1962, 1964 and 1966, respectively.

Jazz at Lincoln Center

Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) is a venue comprising part of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. JALC's performing arts complex, Frederick P. Rose Hall, is located in New York City, slightly south of the main Lincoln Center campus and directly adjacent to Columbus Circle, housed inside the Time Warner Center. The complex was designed by acclaimed architect Rafael Viñoly and constructed by Turner-Santa Fe, a joint venture between Turner Construction and Santa Fe Construction. It opened in October 2004. The organization was founded in 1987.

Programs

Wynton Marsalis serves as the Artistic Director, Greg Scholl serves as the Executive Director, and Jason Olaine serves as Director of Programming. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (JLCO) serves as the resident orchestra performing at Frederick P. Rose Hall and around the world.

JALC produces a year-round schedule of performance, education and broadcast events for audiences of all ages. These productions include concerts, national and international tours, residencies, weekly national radio and television programs, recordings, publications, an annual high school jazz band competition and festival, a band director academy, a jazz appreciation curriculum for children, advanced training through the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies, music publishing, children’s concerts, lectures, adult education courses and student and educator workshops. Jazz at Lincoln Center will produce over 3,000 events during its 2008/09 season.

Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is a trumpeter, composer, teacher, music educator, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, United States. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences. Marsalis has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and his Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Marsalis is the son of jazz musician Ellis Marsalis, Jr. (pianist), grandson of Ellis Marsalis, Sr., and brother of Branford (saxophonist), Delfeayo (trombonist), and Jason (drummer). He performed the national anthem of Super Bowl XX in 1986.

Life and career

Marsalis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1961, the second of six sons of Delores (née Ferdinand) and Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr., a pianist and music professor. Marsalis and wife Delores Ferdinand have six sons: Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis III (1964), Delfeayo Marsalis, Mboya Kinyatta Marsalis (1971), and Jason Marsalis. Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo, and Jason are also jazz musicians. Ellis is a poet, photographer, and network engineer based in Baltimore. At an early age, he exhibited an aptitude for music.

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) is an American professional big band that is produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center, a major performing arts institution structured as a non-profit organization that is housed in its own facility at the Time Warner Center in Manhattan, New York. Wynton Marsalis is the artistic director for Jazz at Lincoln Center, Inc., and director of and trumpeter with the Orchestra.

History

The orchestra was founded in 1988 as part of the Lincoln Center’s summer concert series, "Classical Jazz." In 1991 the JLCO became the resident and touring big band for Jazz at Lincoln Center. The orchestra commissions works, which by early 2000, surpassed 60 by composers that include Benny Carter, Benny Golson, Gerry Mulligan, Geri Allen, Marcus Roberts, Melba Liston, and John Lewis.
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Tours

The JLCO has made several tours of the United States, first toured Europe in 1995, performed in Russia in 1999, and toured China, Taiwan, Japan, and Australasia in 2000. In spring 2000 the JLCO toured the United States with its production of For Dancers Only.

Jazz

Jazz is a music genre that originated from African American communities of New Orleans in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It emerged in the form of independent traditional and popular musical styles, all linked by the common bonds of African American and European American musical parentage with a performance orientation. Jazz spans a period of over a hundred years, encompassing a very wide range of music, making it difficult to define. Jazz makes heavy use of improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation and the swing note, as well as aspects of European harmony, American popular music, the brass band tradition, and African musical elements such as blue notes and African-American styles such as ragtime. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience to the music as well. Intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as "one of America's original art forms".